Love Battles Martinsville Handling; Misses Championship 4

Jesse Love (Scotte Sprinkle/Race Face Digital photo)

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – A 12th-place finish Saturday at Martinsville Speedway, courtesy of an ill-handling race car, left Jesse Love short of the win he needed to make the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship 4.

Love’s Richard Childress Racing-prepared No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet Camaro qualified strong, allowing him to start fourth and run up front early in the National Debt Relief 250, but as the first few stints wore on it became clear that the 19-year-old from Menlo Park, Calif., didn’t have the tools he needed to fight with.

After finishing the first 60-lap stage in fifth, Love lost ground on pit road during a lap-106 pit stop and faded to 12th in stage two before radioing to crew chief Danny Stockman that his car “was nowhere near what we need to win,” and later pitting for a major chassis adjustment with 113 laps left.

That off-sequence stop put Love back in 32nd for the next restart, and he spent the remainder of the race trying to rebound with what he had.

Through attrition and several late-race restarts, Love found his way back up to 15th by the penultimate restart with 24 laps left, then advanced three more spots to end up 12th at the checkered flag.

Unfortunately for Love, he was in a must-win scenario by the end of the second stage, meaning his rookie-year playoff run came to an end one race short of contending for a series championship.

“We had a package coming in here that we pretty much knew would either haul the mail – which it did for a couple of laps at a time – or would be a struggle for us, and the latter is pretty much what we ended up with,” admitted Love after the race. “We just missed it. It wasn’t just the car; it was a mixture of me and how I was driving what I had, and we just didn’t work out for one another in this one.

“I’m not disappointed, though, because I truthfully feel like I did all that I could leading up to the race and the team did all that they could for us to be prepared as a group,” he continued. “I’d be disappointed if I felt like we lost out on [the Championship 4] from a lack of effort, but I don’t feel that was the case when I look at it from inside this race team.”

After the final points reseeding of the year, Love sits seventh in the driver standings with one race remaining, with a realistic shot at bypassing Sheldon Creed for sixth at Arizona’s Phoenix Raceway.

In leading fellow rookie Shane van Gisbergen by 76 points, Love also effectively clinched Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors as well Saturday. The official announcement of the Xfinity Series’ top rookie will be made closer to the NASCAR Awards, once an industry voting panel makes its confirming decision.

Aside from his playoff run, securing rookie-of-the-year was what Love entered the season aiming to accomplish, making Saturday’s results meaningful despite the premature end to his playoffs.

“We put rookie-of-the-year on our whiteboard before the season started, and to have the points we need to get that done definitely validates how hard we’ve worked and grinded all season long,” Love noted. “This year definitely was a fight between myself and Shane, and it was fun to race against him throughout the season and an honor to have him be the one I battled for the rookie honors.”

Now, after the year concludes next weekend at Phoenix, Love will shift his focus toward 2025 and his second year with RCR in the Xfinity Series.

With how much growth he’s shown from February to November, as well as minimal expected changes to his team makeup, Love believes he and Stockman will be primed to contend even harder for an Xfinity Series championship in the year to come.

“I feel like we’re in a good spot to build for next year,” he said. “Maybe our Martinsville package needs some work, as does my style (laughter), but we’ve been really consistent the last few months and we have that to use as our foundation.

“We’ve basically got year one under our belt now, so hopefully year two can be the jump that we want it to be when it gets here in February.”

Love will wrap his maiden Xfinity Series campaign on Saturday, Nov. 9 at Phoenix Raceway during the 200-mile season finale race. Broadcast coverage is slated for 7:30 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.